France to provide life support and medicine for ‘Gaganyaan’ Crew

The national human space mission ‘Gaganyaan’ will get French support in the form of life support and medicine for the Indian crew.

The French space agency CNES head Jean-Yves LeGall announced that an enabling agreement would be signed on Wednesday with his ISRO counterpart K. Sivan.

He was at the bi-annual Bengaluru Space Expo BSX 2018 which opened here on Thursday.

ISRO wants industry to drive the production of routine launch vehicles in two years, Dr. Sivan said on Thursday. “We are not satisfied with the current level of industry participation in the space programme. Our missions are growing at a fast pace, to almost two launches a month, from the current seven-odd a year,” he said, urging industry to take up bigger and independent roles in making satellites and launchers.

Giving a sense of the monetary returns to home industry, he said that of the ₹10,400 crore worth of launch vehicles approved a few months back, about ₹9000 crore will go to supplier industries in the coming years. Industry must gauge the benefits of investing in space in a big way, Dr. Sivan said.

As many as 59 satellites are due in three years. ISRO needs over a dozen light-lifting PSLV rockets to launch them — and wants industry to step in and relieve ISRO of this load, he said.

Mr. Le Gall said the two countries will add new applications such as drinking water resources to their old tie-up for climate satellite missions. Next year, CNES would have its Argos payload again on Oceansat-3. The 3-day BSX is hosted by ISRO, Antrix and CII.

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